Absolutely! The laws serve no other purpose than to allow multinational corporations to bully... uhh... other... multinational corporations?

No, it allows more established corporations (and patent trolls) with large patent portfolios to prevent competition from young upstarts. Megacorps don't often go after other megacorps because it would end up as mutually assured destruction. They just cross-license their portfolios.

"Megacorps don't often go after other megacorps because it would end up as mutually assured destruction"

Its true they use patents more like negotiation chess pieces in some kind of tactical battle, but sometimes big companies do go after others big companies simply to achieve some tactical advantage. For example using the law as a delaying tactic against their opponent or to force them to give up some other patent rights as a negotiated compromise. Sadly its all tactical moves at their scale. It often has very little to do with engineering for them. They are more interested in its strategic value against opponents.

By anyway, this patent needs to die now. (http://www.google.com/patents?id=Ay99AAAAEBAJ&dq=7139761)

Its totally insane. In a long winded way as far as I can tell, its trying to say associating a piece of data with another piece of data. What like for example, associating a persons name with their postal address and then associating that postal address with their data of birth. etc.. etc.. etc.. Its what computers have been setup to do for decades!, yet this patent troll is trying to claim its their idea and Facebook should pay them!... yeah right, and how long after they go after Facebook, will it take them to then go after everyone else who uses a computer. I mean, FFS allowing patents like this makes a total mockery of the whole patent system.

[Disclaimer] I'm not a patent lawyer and these IP law comments are for entertainment purposes only;).. assuming you find IP law entertaining, (not that i'm implying IP law isn't entertaining;)... hmm.. this disclaimer could be made recursive.

Just to be safe, it's probably best to limit this story to just a single tag. Under no circumstances should anybody tag this story with multiple categories such as "patenttroll" and "getfucked" at the same time.

That's not how it works. The description is just a description of what a patent is for. There can be a hundred different methods to associate a piece of data with multiple categories, and each one can be patented separately.

Now it may be that every single one of these is obvious and therefore non-patentable but you can't make that determination from the title.

Back in the day, BBS's had all of this plus eBay's auction functions et al.Prior art should invalidate most of this stuff. People who have adapted OLDideas to the "new" age , are just assholes. 90 percent of all this was doneon Bulletin boards before the internet became popular.

It is time for all of us old timers to bring this silly stuff to an end!We saw or developed it before ANY of these newbies ever thought of it. Snedyour prior art to the patent office!!! Most of it was copyrighted beforemany of these douchebags were born !!!

If you actually read the patent, which is something that the submitter appears to have skipped, it goes quite a bit further than just many-to-many database relationships. For something written in 2000, it is definitely novel. Whether it is appropriate for patent protection is debatable, of course, but it's not just a description of a relational database.

Addendum: I don't know when it was written, but the provisional application was dated 2002 and the patent application was dated 2003, with an issue date in 2006 - still before Facebook implemented the features that the patent claims.

That said, the Facebook source code issue needs the following to be said:
1. Discovery in the courts gets you access to anything unless it is protected by trade secrets laws or the like. I haven't read the order or anything, but it'd be outright insane if the judge didn't order that the source code not be used for anything but looking for patent violations. I have seen similar things done, with stiff penalties to the lawyers and to the parties for violating such an order.
2. You don't need to look at the source code of Facebook to see whether it implements the invention described by this patent. You only need to create a user account. The patent doesn't seem to describe any algorithms, but rather a high-level information organization scheme.

If we're getting to the point where people are winning cases because they've effectively patented a design pattern, then we're all in trouble.

I mean, "associating a piece of data with multiple categories" -- sounds like every relational database schema on the planet to me.

You're right and that's exactly what everybody should encourage. Patent trolls are the best friends of those who dislike the patent system. I'll explain why. Nobody will care to reform a system which is quasi functional, but everybody, even lobbyists will push for reform on a system which is completely broken. If any Joe can sue the crap out of a major lobbying corporation for some silly patent you can be damn sure that the corporations will do anything to nullify this. And when the law is with Joe, the only thing left to do is to push for legislation change. So you see in a capitalistic world the absolute best way to make a change about anything is to show that the current structure is unprofitable for all major corporations. See it as "lobbying the lobbyists."

Anyone wanna take bets on how long until Leader Technologies comes out with their own social networking site that looks very similar to Facebook, and gets sued for having some technology that infringes on a Facebook patent?

But seriously, shouldn't the court be trying to determine infringement, rather than letting the plaintiff view every piece of code Facebook has written? That's almost like saying "Microsoft infringed on 'using a scroll bar'; let Red Hat view all of the source for Windows so Red Hat can make sure it's not infringing." - if Windows were the only product Microsoft had. It's a crazy statement to make. In industrial terms, it sounds even worse: "Caterpillar might be infringing on a patent for 'method of transporting hydraulic fluid'; give Mitsubishi all of their blueprints for every one of their products so they can make sure it's not infringing".

If you didn't catch it, did you notice the 'obviousness' factor in those examples? Associating data into multiple categories seems pretty obvious, as databases have been doing just that for a long time.

I don't know how this got modded insightful. Defendants in business litigation typically have to hand over the source code and other sensitive information (like sales data). The court simply issues a "protective order" limiting who can view the source code. Usually the protective order designates source code as "attorneys eyes only" meaning that only the requester's (Leader Technology) outside attorneys can view the source. Plaintiffs and defendants squabble over these issues as a way to drive up the cost of litigation and not because there is any risk that source code might be leaked and duplicated.

It seems to me that is a different thing than the original statement, "Attorney's eyes only". . . . "Attorney's eyes only" either means what it says, or it does not.

I can't disagree with you there. What the original poster didn't mention is that "Attorneys' eyes only" means what the protective order says "Attorneys' eyes only" means. You have to look to the protective order itself to see what exceptions exist to allow outside experts to view the material.

9. For purposes of this Protective Order, a consultant or expert shall be defined as a person who is neither an employee, agent or representative of a party, nor anticipated to become an employee, agent or representative of a party in the near future, who is not involved in the application or prosecution of patents for the party, and who is retained or employed to assist in the preparation for trial in this litigation, whether full or part time, by or at the direction of counsel for a party. The procedure for having a consultant or expert approved for access to confidential material designated as CONFIDENTIAL, HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL - ATTORNEYS' EYES ONLY or HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL - ATTORNEYS' EYES ONLY - SOURCE CODE under this Protective Order shalI be as follows:

a. Outside counsel for the receiving party shall (1) provide the consultant or
expert with a copy of this Protective Order, (2) explain its terns, and (3) obtain the
written agreement of the consultant or expert, in the form of Exhibit A hereto, to comply
with and be bound by the terms of this Protective Order. Before providing information
designated CONFIDENTIAL, HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL - ATTORNEYS' EYES ONLY or HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL - ATTORNEYS' EYES ONLY - SOURCE CODE by a producing party pursuant to this Protective Order to a consultant or expert, the party seeking to disclose the information to a consultant or cxpert shall identify the consultant or expert to the producing party in writing and provide the producing party with (a) an executed Exhibit A, and (b) a written statement setting forth the consultant's or expert's residence address, business address, employer, job title, curriculum vitae, and past or present association with any party, as well as a list of litigation matters for which
the consultant or expert has provided any professional services during the preceding five
years;

b. Five (5) court days following the identification specified in the preceding subparagraph, the identifying party may disclose the information designated CONFIDENTIAL, HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL - ATTORNEYS' EYES ONLY or HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL - ATTORNEYS' EYES ONLY - SOURCE CODE under this Protective Order to the identified consultant or expert unless the party receives a
written objection to the identification, served by facsimile or electronic mail, setting forth in detail the grounds on which it is based. Failure to object within five (5) days of the
identification shall be deemed a waiver of the objection. If an identifying party receives
such an objection within five (5) days of the identification, the consultant or expert shall
be barred from access to any information designated CONFIDENTIAL, HIGHLY
CONFIDENTIAL - ATTORNEYS' EYES ONLY or HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL -
ATTORNEYS' EYES ONLY - SOURCE CODE under this Protective Order for
fourteen (14) calendar days commencing with the receipt by the producing party of a
copy of the executed Exhibit A and accompanying information required in subparagraph
(a) above;

c. If within fourteen (14) calendar days, the parties are unable to resolve their
differences and the opposing party moves for a further protective order preventing
disclosure of information designated CONFIDENTIAL, H

If you didn't catch it, did you notice the 'obviousness' factor in those examples? Associating data into multiple categories seems pretty obvious, as databases have been doing just that for a long time.

Or like Slashdot has been doing for ages. As this slashdot article is filed under the categories: news, social.

Anyone wanna take bets on how long until Leader Technologies comes out with their own social networking site that looks very similar to Facebook, and gets sued for having some technology that infringes on a Facebook patent?

It really doesn't matter if they do develop a social network site or not. There's been dozens of Myspace and Facebook clones out there. None have particularly succeeded. The underlying tech isn't what drives their success. It's the ability of their Marketing Droids to convince people that the emperor is really not, in fact, stark naked.

There's been dozens of Myspace and Facebook clones out there. None have particularly succeeded. The underlying tech isn't what drives their success. It's the ability of their Marketing Droids to convince people that the emperor is really not, in fact, stark naked.

I think what really drives Facebook is that it reached the critical mass to get a strong network effect.

As you pointed out with the source code, there are numerous sites that could have served the role Facebook presently serves. I suspect this is a system that was destined to converge on one particular website, but was chaotic with respect to which site would get the crown.

Pretty much every search engine (Vector Space Model) ever invented infringes heavily on Leader's patent. In the vector space model every document or page is categorized under every term that appears in that document. Doah! Poor internet is doomed! Pretty soon Google will have to hand over all of their code too. No more multiple categories per thing.

The patent in question deals with associating data into multiple categories dynamically. It's fairly obvious but (as far as I'm aware) it is a relatively recent innovation. It's definitely not something that databases do in terms of storage. They can do it, using views or triggers with stored procedures, but this is not a simple patent on a data table, a category table and a many-to-many cross reference table linking the two.

So they basically claim they have a patent on the one-to-many Foreign Key?

NO! In fact, the patent itself specifically cites a one-to-many relationship as already being known. The attempt at claiming coverage of a one-to-many appears to come only from the incompetent who wrote the summary.

Are you kidding me?! So when I create a database table that allows me associate a record with multiple categories I'm infringing on this patent? Surely this isn't the whole story... could someone smarter than me fill me in please?

If prior art would vacate this patent, don't you think Facebook lawyers would have mentioned it? Are you suggesting that the team of Facebook lawyers is so incompetent as to not understand the technology or law related to this suit?

I think it's a lot more likely that none of the wags commenting here at Slashdot really understand the case. I tried to look up the patent, but frankly I don't understand patents. The articles weren't very informative.

"associating a piece of data with multiple categories" is simply how TFA summarized the patent. It's not that simple, patents rarely are. If you look at the patent in question, it has several claims that go into detail about the processes involved in their system. It's likely one of these processes that is the focal point.

Now, are these claims patentable? I don't know. there is a lot of long-windedness in patent claims, and it depends on how borad or narrow they are interpreted. Obviously the examiner found them to be narrow enough to be patentable. I doubt it's as simple as a one-to-many relation in a database, because even though examiners miss things, they really wouldn't have missed that. Maybe the judge will overturn it though, if he reads the patent more broadly.

Additionally, while the judge in question deems it fine to let Leader Technologies look at Facebook's source (for a patent, no less!) in its entirety for a single feature, it would be "overboard to ask a patent holder to disclose all of their products that practice any claim of the patent-in-suit".

TFA goes on to state:

Facebook has requested that they must know, whether Leader offers products that practice claims of the patent-in-suit, however judge agreed with leader that it could be overboard to ask a patentee to disclose all of their products that practice any claim of the patent-in-suit.
Moreover, Facebook has not cited authority that could support requiring a patentee to prove, through detailed claim charts. Facebook is entitled to know every Leader product or service that Leader contends practices any of the asserted claims.
The court has ordered, within ten days of the following order, that Leader shall supplement its response to Facebook and disclose all products and services.
Leader shall provide Facebook with a list of source code modules with respect to which it seeks production of technical documents no later than September 22, 2009.
Facebook shall provide Leader with all such relevant technical documents no later than September 29, 2009 and Leader shall promptly complete its review of Facebooks Source code and technical documents to Facebook no later than October 15, 2009.

You know, I get really tired of seeing articles like this, reading the actual article, and being a bit pissed off that they "got me" with their stupid summary. You'd think I would have learned better by now but the sad part is that most of these sensational things are entirely believable. It's really kind of depressing.

On another note, who the hell writes these summaries? Do they just have really awful reading comprehension or does all the sensational shit just float to the top? I suppose it's a combination of those 2 things isn't it?

Don't know if it's what I'd call FUD, exactly -- the very idea of patenting "associating a piece of data with multiple categories" is still absurd.

And, strictly speaking, isn't what the patent at issue claims; as is common in patent stories, what the claimed mechanism achieves is confused here with what is claimed. Patents don't cover results, they cover particular mechanisms for acheiving them.

No, the detailed exerpt just doesn't add anything. It's still equally bogus.The fact that the judge claimed that there is no "legal theory" to supportthe idea that the suing party should not have to give good examples ofthings that use the patent in question doesn't mean it's a bogus idea todeny the request.

The fact that the judge claimed that there is no "legal theory" to support
the idea that the suing party should not have to give good examples of
things that use the patent in question doesn't mean it's a bogus idea to
deny the request.

Yeah, it does... Infringement is in the patent statutes, 35 USC. The judge has to follow those statutes, as enacted by Congress (otherwise he's an Activist Judge!!). For better or for worse, the statutes don't require that the patent holder use the patent in question. So, that's a perfectly cromulent reason to deny the request. It's equivalent to a defendant charged with grand theft auto demanding to see the driving record of the vehicle owner - there's no requirement that the owner ever drove the thin

Of course it's a number pulled out of my backside... but my comment is based on my belief that every corporation out there that ever made a dollar off of the current broken patent system would go after any effort to fix it. That's a huge number of corporations (many of which have very deep pockets) in all areas of our economy that would work against it. Also included many corps that are in the health care market itself. I think they would all get together gang up on that legislation like a pack of wild w

A computer-implemented network based system that facilitates management of data, comprising:
a computer-implemented context component of the network based system for capturing context information associated with user-defined data created by user interaction of a user in a first context of the network based system, the context component dynamically storing the context information in metadata associated with the user-defined data, the user defined data and metadata stored on a storage component of the network-based system; and
a computer-implemented tracking component of the network-based system for tracking a change of the user from the first context to a second context of the network-based system and dynamically updating the stored metadata based on the change, wherein the user access the data from the second context.

Another reason the patent system needs to be updated is because patents are written for lawyers, not for practitioners. Ex: If the patent is about software, a software engineer should be able to read and understand the patent. If it is a patent on a food recipe, then a chef should be able to understand it.

But the patent above requires a lawyer and a linguistics expert to read it, then explain it to the software engineer. The engineer won't understand the patent, and the lawyer won't understand the softwa

What is the point of the first link to shr1k.blogspot.com [blogspot.com]? It seems completely irrelevant to this article. I searched the blog back to September 2008 and only found three references to Facebook, none have to do with Facebook being ordered to do anything.

Is it just me, or are 80% of the faces in the "people you may know" feature on Facebook, people that I do know, but I deliberately choose not to be friends with?

Whenever I'm Facebook stalking someone and I find out that their profile is public I feel like

Having a judge presiding on a case whose technical details he is wholly ignorant of strikes me as terribly dumb. A judge in this case is basing his understanding of the facts upon the testimony of lawyers and expert witnesses. It's very likely both sides are lying their fucking asses off --excuse me, I mean shading the facts through a bias filter.

Judges these days make Night Court look like the gold standard for jurisprudence.

Jerry,
Thank you for pointing out my omission of the networking requirement. I am not a lawyer, but I have worked on a few patent cases as an expert, so I know to read the patent before talking about it, even if I am not as careful as a lawyer at reading over it.:-)

I believe the networking requirement you mention will be fulfilled by any system which needs to use a network to validate user information from a central source, such as kerberos authentication or Windows Active Directory mechanisms. Of co

Due to the extreme harm of allowing a potential competitor access to its family jewels, Facebook might try for an interlocutory appeal [wikipedia.org] or asking that a court appoint an independent special master to examine the source code and determine if there is any code that is potentially infringing, and only allowing Facebook access to that code.

Interlocutory appeals aren't easy, but a special master might be easier to get, especially if Facebook offered to foot the bill.

I'm looking at the patent now, and while it's not rocket science, it's nowhere near as simple as "associating a piece of data with multiple categories". In fact, that quote is from the article, not the patent. The patent mentions nothing of the sort. The patent seems to be about maintaining metadata across multiple application contexts and updating the context appropriately. It seems pretty wishy-washy, and I think it is too broad for a patent. But it's nothing like the mirage that has got everyone here foaming at the mouth. It's NOT a patent for associating a piece of data with multiple categories. It's more like a patent for a web application API framework, if I understand the gobbledy gook at all...LS

I looked at it briefly in someone's post up the page... and it sounds a lot like Facebook Connect. Facebook Connect allows 3rd party websites to query FB for data about a user who has logged in to FB via their API, mash it up with data the 3rd party has collected and send it all back to FB which will then respond with appropriate content.

So FBConnect maintains metadata across multiple app contexts and updates it appropriately.

This could also be applied to their FBApp system as well... since applications bui

Did ANYONE even read the patent? I'm looking at the patent now, and while it's not rocket science, it's nowhere near as simple as "associating a piece of data with multiple categories". In fact, that quote is from the article, not the patent.

It's a software patent, and therfor, to all of us not living in the United States, laughable.

Certainly some of the claims in the patent are what are known as "context management", and would have significant prior art. The specific linking of them to the exact framework they describe (web-based context switching and data tracking within contexts) may or may not have prior art, it's kind of hard to tell w/o spending more time than I care to reading the material. I certainly think that I used tools that could do much of that prior to 2003 though.

Excuse me, but isn't there a TON of prior art in this arena, for example, RDBMS and object oriented database systems have done this from the very beginning. What the heck is an RDBMS good for if you can't actually use or display associated objects?

ZOMG! It's being done on a community building site! We'd better patent it because it's a revolutionary concept!

Looks like the patent judge through the book in Facebook's face. And they'd better face up to it, or they'll surely be booked. Unless the judge does an about-face to save face, but I'm not going to call my bookie just yet. This whole issue is facetious, but I'm going to bookmark it for teh lulz.

That's an insane patent to have been granted. The fact that the patent holder is asserting that Facebook is infringing it without having seen their source code is extremely telling - the patent holder appears well aware that the patent (which should never have been granted) is so broad as to cover functionality rather than implementation and therefore anyone who appears to be doing what the patent covers is almost certainly infringing it.

It's as is the patent office granted someone a patent on cracking nuts as opposed to a specific nutcracker design, and the lucky patent holder would then be in a position to go after anyone selling shelled nuts on the grounds that they must have shelled them, ergo they must have violated their patent. Of course nuts, unlike software claims decribed in obfusctated legalese, are easy to understand. I'm 100% positive one could describe assigning a value to a variable in such a complex way, accounting for all possible implenentations, semantics, etc, etc, that some moron at the patent office would think it sounded like a highly technical and specific discovery and no-doubt patent worthy. I think I'll go apply for a patent of comments right now ("in the 42nd embodiment, a source code file, stored in EBDIC format on a USB storage device, embeds self-descriptive components, that will be automatically stripped by the FORmula TRANslation language lexical analyzer,...").

Given how complex software is, and how difficult it is for lay people to understand it, and given that the patent office in granting things like this make it obvious that they do not have software experts examining these patents, it seems that the whole notion of software patents needs to be reexamined. They are really doing more harm than good, and the intent of patents to encourage innovation is being subverted rather than helped by software patents. The patent office doesn't seem to understand the process of software design/development at all.

Seriously, someone needs to explain the process of object-orienteddomain modelling, analysis, and design to the USPTO, and explainhow virtually every outcome of such a process is "obvious to a qualifiedpractitioner in the field." These patents on every "complicated-seeming"computer system that uses basic symbolic modelling of a domain andimplements a few obvious methods on the objects, are ridiculousbeyond belief, and one can take no position on these patentsexcept to studiously ignore them.

First, the problem that they're attempting to address with this patent: when you create a document or receive an email, it's up to you to categorize that document or email by whatever context (category/job fuction/etc) is appropriate...like sales or engineering. Usually this is done by creating categorized folders to stick the files or emails or whatever into.

Their solution: When you're working on something on your computer (using their technology), you're doing so within a certain context. For example you might be working on Sales, Marketing, or Software Developement, etc. So if your current working context is Marketing, everything you create while in that context is automatically associated with Marketing. If you send someone an email, it's automatically tagged as related to Marketing, so there is no need for you or the recipient to stuff it into a Marketing folder for filing. When you switch contexts from Marketing to Sales, all the content you create is then tagged as Sales, so once again, there is no need for the user to organize their stuff.

It sounds like their idea also provides for things to be associated with multiple contexts, and workspaces can be created that cover multiple contexts, so things get tagged accordingly. Also, it allows for manual tagging.

I can't really think of how this applies to Facebook...and Leader Technologies doesn't appear to have an active product that does any of this. What do you guys think about my interpretation?

It's too bad that we have so many old farts that are making decisions about things that they aren't capable of understanding. The good judges should be consulting with the right experts so they can get good advice on how things that are beyond them work... but the egos are so large what is the chance this happening more than just a small part of the time?

Congratulations. You've described a rule 34 inspection almost perfectly! Sadly, I'm not even being humorous.

Oh, there is one minor difference though: a rule 34 inspection is normally used for something like a large machine that can't reasonably be delivered to the other side.

The rest of it is pretty accurate though. For one example, I was involved in a case where the other side was ordered to produce a copy of a floppy disk -- so they sent a Xerox copy. This was recently enough that even the judge real